Naked Guy in New Light
by WizMonCruWil
Summary: "Would you have dinner with me tonight?" Rory blushed furiously at how impulsively the question came out. For his part, Marty blinked, taken aback, but pleased too. "All right. I know a great place." Rory/Marty pairing, post Revival. Enjoy!
1. Chapter 1: Blast from the Past

**Chapter 1: Blast from the Past**

The pen scratched across the page in a lyrical dance, flourishing a cursive scrawl into black being. Closing the cover, Rory presented another autographed copy to another admiring fan. "Thank you so much for coming!"

The last nine months had been a whirlwind. Since Rory had published the memoir on her and her mother's lives, _Gilmore Girls_ had shot to the top of the New York Times Bestsellers list, setting a record for holding the number one spot. Already, Rory had received talks to adapt the work into a television series - a process she was currently in talks for. Her magnum opus had revitalized her writing career, and academia was approaching her with enticements of a professorship at several of the most prestigious Ivy League colleges.

The boon had come just in time too. Days after her manuscript had been published, Rory Gilmore had given birth to a daughter, Lorelai Paris Gilmore (Laurie, for short). Thinking of her ninth-month-old baby girl, Rory felt anxious to conclude her signing and press tour and get back to Stars Hollow and her beloved family. The only thing that gave her peace of mind was the nightly phone calls from her stepfather, Luke Danes, reporting on Laurie's activities that day.

Even so, Connecticut was miles away from Virginia.

The bookstore would be closing soon. Maybe five more books left to sign. Rory's publisher signaled her with her eyes and a tap to the wrist. A copy flopped open on the table before her, accompanied by a voice:

"At least I can say I knew you when."

Rory looked up... and nearly dropped her pen.

The face before her was one she hadn't seen in ten years. Since college. And her first thought was, _Naked Guy grew up_.

He had filled out in the ensuing decade, his muscles clearly accentuated under a handsome cardigan.

"Marty! As I live and breathe!"

Marty, her old Yale friend, beamed down at her with that signature smile. "Hey, Rory."

Rory felt the need to stand, circle the table and give him a quick, affectionate hug before returning to her place. "What are you doing here?"

"I live here. Virginia Beach. I work for their Town Council."

Rory's eyes shined. "That's wonderful news!"

"And I'm so thrilled that you've become the writer I always knew you would be! Press tours... bestseller list... I heard you on NPR the other day; that's how I knew to come down here. Must be exciting!"

Rory grinned. "It really is." She now signed Marty's copy, making sure to add a personal message, and handed the book to him. "There you go."

Marty nodded pleasantly. "Say, are you gonna make Yale's ten year reunion next month?"

Rory shrugged. "Oh, I don't know."

"You should try to come," he encouraged her. "Promote your book." He winked. "See ya later, maybe?"

Rory smiled tenderly at him. Good old Marty. "Yeah. See ya."


	2. Chapter 2: Catching Up

**Chapter 2: Catching Up**

Originally, Rory had had no intention of attending her Yale 10-year reunion. But even after her press tour ended, Marty's encouragement stuck in the back of her mind. Add in some urging from her mother, and she decided to show up, after all. Promote her book.

The Yale bookstore generously agreed to let her set up a table for her memoirs, of which every copy was soon sold. That task done, Rory wandered the old grounds she had called home in the mid-2000s... and soon bumped into a familiar face.

Marty seemed very happy to see her. "You came!"

Rory hugged him affectionately. "Yeah, apparently there's quite a market here for autobiographies! How long are you in town for?"

"Just this evening. I have a hotel room, then a flight out mid-morning tomorrow."

Rory smiled. "Airbnb." A beat, and then, suddenly: "Would you have dinner with me tonight?"

Rory blushed furiously at how impulsively the question came out. For his part, Marty blinked, taken aback, but pleased too. "All right. I know a great place."

* * *

Thankfully, it was not the same restaurant Logan had taken that large group to all those years ago. Rory lifted her glass of wine with a shy smile. "I hope I'm not upsetting the wife, asking you out like this."

Marty waggled his bare hands at her with a smirk. "No wife to upset." A pause, and then: "You married?"

Rory, for some reason, couldn't meet his gaze as she flushed. "No," she whispered. "But I do have a nine-month-old daughter." She wasn't going to tell him the identity of the father, but something about Marty's presence made her open up. "Logan. He's the father."

If Marty was surprised or judgemental by this news, he didn't show it. He seemed rather thoughtful, in fact. "Well, I suppose something good did come out of my introducing the two of you."

Rory blinked in shock. Even before graduation, she had known (or at least suspected) that Marty regretted the day he ever introduced Rory Gilmore to Logan Huntzberger. He had never been exactly subtle about his feelings back then. But now, hearing that... _He's so sweet_... She quickly changed the subject. "I'm sorry I didn't have anything more suitable to wear. Pregnancy really does a number on your wardrobe."

Marty took her hand. "You look just as beautiful as ever."

Rory gazed at him. He had said something of the same once before, during their senior year. She had been uncomfortable with the implications then. But ten years on...

"You look resplendent," Marty was saying as her mind came up for air.

Dinner soon finished, Rory walked Marty back to his hotel room. The pair stood tensely outside the door, unsure what to say or do. For one mad moment, Rory had the urge to...

She flushed. "Good night." The moment gone, she turned for the elevators.


	3. Chapter 3: Clearing the Air

**Chapter 3: Clearing the Air**

Rory did not get a wink of sleep that night in that godforsaken Airbnb. She rose with the sun, suddenly with a new purpose in mind. Dressing and checking out, she hurried for the airport.

Even waiting inside the terminal at Bradley International, she nearly missed him. Spying his fine head of hair through the crowd, she rushed to catch up with him before her reached security.

"Marty!"

He turned, clearly surprised to see her. Skidding to a stop, Rory began speaking in rough gasps, barely able to get the words out:

"I just need to say this, because I couldn't last night: I'm really sorry for the way I treated you in college. I wasn't the best person then, and sometimes I don't feel like the best person now. I just want to clear the air between us."

Marty just grinned. "Rory... you've always been a fine person to me. And all that stuff from senior year doesn't matter anymore. You've always been..."

Rory peered at him, amused as she guessed. "Resplendent?"

He nodded.

That did it.

Launching herself at him, Rory threw her arms around him and kissed him full on the mouth. She soon felt Marty pull her close and kiss her back. Eyes drooping shut, she deepened the kiss, exhaling through her mouth and parting her lips for him, so that his tongue disappeared practically down her throat. Their mouths were battling for dominance.

It was the best kiss Rory had ever had in her life. Better than Dean, Logan... even Jess...

"Last call for Virginia Beach!"

Marty reluctantly pulled out of the kiss, and Rory was rather pleased with herself to see that he looked elated. He quickly scribbled something on a piece of paper and handed it to her. "Call me?"

Rory beamed, pecking his lips lightly. "Yes." And she watched him disappear through security.

* * *

Rory had been back home in Stars Hollow for only a few days. And already she missed Marty deeply.

His nightly phone calls from Virginia Beach were quickly proving to not be enough, never be enough.

Finally, one evening after putting Laurie down to bed and unable to write a single sentence for her next book, Rory leapt in her car and drove through the night, all the way down to Virginia Beach. It was the wee hours of the morning, when she reached Marty's place, having looked up his address thanks to the phone number he'd given her. Thank goodness some people still used landlines.

It took several knocks for him to answer. Marty had barely opened the door, her name barely on his lips in wonderment before Rory's lips were on his.

They staggered back into Marty's room, tugging, yanking at each other's clothes. Hardly able to get a hold of herself, Rory expertly pinned Marty to the bed before straddling his waist. She unbuttoned his pants, threw down his boxers, to find his... anatomy standing at attention for her. She flushed pink at the size.

"I'm... a bit flattered," she admitted. Smirking impishly, she bowed her head and took him in her mouth. Remembering the whispers she used to hear in dive bars around London, she curled a fist around the top of his shaft, keeping him in place as she first used her tongue, then her fingers to stroke him.

Marty was practically rigamortis on the bed, his mouth slack in shock. "Rory... Rory..." he whispered her name like a prayer.

Rory licked all the way up to his balls, before suckling greedily on them. That did it.

"RORY!" Marty cried a tad too loudly as he came, Rory gulping down every last drop of what he offered her. Giving him one last parting lick from base to tip, Rory giggled as she allowed Marty to flip them, and he sweetly, shyly, began to make love to her...


	4. Chapter 4: Gilmore Versus Danes

**Chapter 4: Gilmore Versus Danes**

The sun flickered through the window, the birds chirped, bathing the two young people naked and sweaty and wrapped in each other's arms.

Against Marty's chest, Rory stirred, to find her lover gazing down at her with a smile.

"Good morning," she purred. Marty just chuckled and bent down to kiss her. "We made love last night."

"Yes, we did," he chuckled, sounding far too smug for her liking, and she was just about to tackle him for another round when...

She sat bolt upright. "We made love last night." And she was still in Virginia Beach. Oh, god...

As if on cue, a phone lit up and beeped on the nightstand, barely placed there with care the night before. Rory dove for it, falling off the bed in the process, so that she barely missed the call. "Oh hell!"

Flipping through her notifications, Rory saw no less than seven missed calls from Lorelai, each voicemail gradually rising in its panic, followed by a clipped voicemail from her stepfather, Luke, the one she had just missed: "Come Home. NOW."

The couple flitted about the bedroom heater-skelter, quickly redressing. Rory raced out the door, but not before grabbing Marty and giving him the fiercest kiss imaginable. "I'll call you when I get in," she promised.

* * *

It was dark by the time she reached Stars Hollow. At Number 37, Maple Street, only a single light was on: emanating from the living room, it seemed.

Entering the house as quietly as possible, Rory noted that the source was the lamp over her stepfather's favorite easy chair...

Which Luke Danes was now perched in, a newspaper in his lap, his reading glasses pushed down to the bridge of his nose. Lorelai had given him quite a needling for that, when Luke had first taken to wearing them. "We're getting old, Butch," was all she said about it.

Now, however, the reading glasses could not mask the fact that Luke was not happy, as he finally met his stepdaughter's eyes.

"Where the hell have you been?" he asked shortly.

Rory winced. Far better would it be to just admit the truth now; she was clearly in enough trouble as it was. She felt like she was 16 again, only back then it would have been Lorelai taking on the role of both mother and father in reaming her out. "Virginia Beach. I went to see a friend. I'm... I'm seeing someone."

Luke quirked an eyebrow, his lips in a tight frown. "Ah. And evidently this tryst was just so important, you left your daughter here for an entire night with no notice!"

 _And here it comes..._ Rory thought, even if the sight of a Luke Danes thoroughly pissed off at her was a rather new concept. Sure, he had been gruff with her before, but never... mad...

"No note! No phone call!" Luke worked himself up into one of his world-famous rants. "Laurie was crying for you the whole night! We only just got her down an hour ago. What the hell were you thinking, Rory? You can't just put your kid on the back burner, call a time-out for a few hours! Whatever this... distraction is down in Virginia Beach, you are ending it now!"

Rory gawked at him, his words tripping a wire somewhere deep within her. Anger roared to life. "You're not my father! And don't you dare lecture me on how to parent my kid! You don't know what it's like to be one!"

That got him. Luke stumbled back, almost as if he was physically hurt. Rory's shot had gone home, and they both knew it. Stepfather and stepdaughter regarded each other in a strange tableau, and for the first time seemed to become aware of their own behavior.

Then, the mask came on. That emotional mask that Luke sometimes put up to guard against the deep hurt going on inside him. For if there was one thing Luke refused to do, it was cry in front of others. He stalked out of the Gilmore house, barely remembering not to slam the door shut in his pain, lest he wake Laurie sleeping in the next room.

Sagging slightly, Rory turned towards the stairs and bed... only to find her mother on the banister, an unrecognizable look of fury on her face. She only pointed a shaking finger towards the door.

"Get. Out."

Shaken at her mother's wrath, Rory stumbled out the door, little caring where her feet might take her. She somehow ended up at the Gazebo in the town square, which didn't surprise her in the slightest. She had come here often in her youth to think or shake off a round of emotional torment. Unable to choke back a sob, Rory put her head in her arms and wept. There she remained for an untold amount of minutes, kicking herself for how she had neglected her daughter. Treated Luke. She pined for Marty, wishing he could hold her in his arms.

Refusing to recognize Luke's influence as her stepfather had been bad enough. To deny his parental status as April's father was a particularly low blow. It would have been the sort of petty tactic her grandmother would have used, once upon a time, and Rory hated herself all the more for it. She knew that Luke not being in her stepsister's life for her first twelve years was still a sore spot for him, and probably always would be.

Rory finally raised her head. Across the way, she could the Diner's lights were on. Luke. Shakily standing on unsteady feet, she willed herself to approach the front door. Her stepfather was inside, flitting about the Diner almost aimlessly, with inconsistent bursts of energy, as if he was looking for something - anything - to do with which to ease his mind. And he probably was. Rory found it within herself to knock.

Luke froze when he saw who it was. Stiffened. Slowly, over what seemed like an eternity, he crossed to the front door, the bell jingling as he opened it. Rory braced herself for his signature, gruff "We're Closed" - it _was_ the middle of the night - but none came.

"Can I come in?" Her whisper was submissive, meek, but even so, Rory half-expected Luke to say No. And she couldn't exactly blame him if he did. But instead, he held the door open wider, allowing his stepdaughter to sashay uncomfortably past him.

Rory took her usual seat at the counter. As soon as she sat down, she heard - or thought she heard - what sounded like faint music coming from close by. A few yards down, Luke wiped down the counter, not speaking. Cocking her ears, Rory strained to listen to whatever tune was percolating into her head. At last, she identified the source:

It was an old, battered TV, resting against the backside of the counter, against the order window where Caesar would place his perfected masterpieces. The device came complete with antenna, a Panavision make; Rory recalled sometimes seeing it up in her stepfather's old loft, where he had once lived before marrying her mother. And now, on its screen, she saw old grainy footage, clearly captured from a decent distance away. A single shaft of light beamed down onto the stage... and a figure sporting a red wig.

Rory dared to smile. It was her 7th grade musical, Stars Hollow Middle School's production of _The Little Mermaid_. She had been 13 then. Luke had filmed it himself, at Lorelai's insistence, even though videography was clearly prohibited. Rory, of course, had been cast as Ariel, and she now watched the scarcely-teenage version of herself sing:

 _"What would I give if I could live out of these waters? What would I pay to spend a day warm on the sand? Betcha on land, they understand. Bet they don't reprimand their daughters. Bright young women, sick of swimming, ready to stand..."_

The particular bridge of the song moved Rory, considering its now-poetic context. She dared herself to steal a glance at Luke, down the counter, and then, deeply ashamed, she turned away.

The sniffles came of almost their own accord, and through her wet eyelashes, Rory could see her stepfather turn almost instinctively at the sound. The gaze he sent her way was so undeservingly sympathetic, Rory's sniffles only grew louder. The way she cried, she felt like a child, and her memory took her back almost two decades earlier...

 _She had taken the corner just beyond the Diner too fast and too hard on her bike, spilling into the street and scraping her knee. As she sat there, sniffling on the pavement, a rather large man in a backwards baseball cap approached her and held out his hand. Gingerly taking it, Rory had allowed him to lead her into the Diner, where he promptly presented her with a fresh apple pie, a Bandaid and an understanding ear. So it had been, the first time future stepparent and stepchild had met..._

Back in the present, Rory blinked through her salty tears to watch Luke present her with a similar slice of pie. He said nothing as he now stood across from her, the dish rag limp in his hand. He was merely there, as he always had been, proud and silent but also secretly a softie at heart. Waiting.

"I'm sorry!" Rory wept, deeply ashamed for how she had denied him. "What I said was... unspeakable. You... you have always been more of a father to me than my own Dad! Can you ever forgive me?" The words seemed foreign, even to her own ears, and it made her wonder if she had ever needed to apologize to Luke for _anything_. She supposed crashing her car with Jess counted, but she had done so by insisting up and down that it wasn't his fault.

Luke took a special interest in the limestone of the countertop. A pregnant beat and then: "You're forgiven." But his relaxed countenance did not quite reach up to his eyes, and by that Rory knew it would take more words, a lot of actions and a lot of time before she was truly forgiven. Circling the counter, he rubbed a soothing hand over her shoulder. "Let's go home."

They headed back to Maple Street, and even though so much still hung unsaid between them, they barely spoke. Lorelai was waiting for them on the front porch, in her nightgown, but she stiffened when Rory came trailing into the light behind Luke:

"I'm sorry, we don't accept ungrateful wretches in this house."

The words stung like a sharp slap to the face, but Luke was mounting the stairs before Rory could even begin to think of a reply. "Lorelai," he murmured gently. "Let it go. It's over."

Lorelai blinked, looking like she wanted to object, so Luke kissed her goodnight deeply before she had the chance. He staggered up to bed. Rory made to awkwardly follow, slip in after him, half-expecting Lorelai to throw out her arm against the doorjamb and block her path. But no, Rory was nearly to the stairs when she was halted by a very different impediment: a sharp clearing of the throat. She turned, steeling herself.

"You will never speak to my husband that way again, as long as you live in this house. Otherwise, you won't be living here anymore. Am I understood?"

Rory nodded. "Yes," she whispered.

Lorelai cocked an eyebrow. "Yes _what_?"

Rory openly cringed. "Yes _ma'am_." Rare was the moment when Lorelai insisted on such deference; the demand was more characteristic of someone like Emily. The daughter took a deep breath. "I'm sorry. I know it's not enough, but right now, I don't know what else to say."

Lorelai shook her head curtly. "Don't apologize to me," she deflected coldly. "You save it for your stepfather." She stepped closer, her voice dropping to a whisper. "He doesn't _sleep_ when you're gone. He didn't sleep through a single night of your press tour, did you know that? _Did you_?" she pressed.

Struck dumb, Rory shook her head.

"I haven't seen him like that since April's first semester at MIT," Lorelai waxed on, almost half to herself. "I had to hold him every night that fall. He worries about you - _both_ of you." Sighing, deflated, too exhausted to even talk anymore (a rare thing for Lorelai Gilmore indeed), she jerked her head towards the stairs. "Go to bed. I can't stand to look at you right now."

Rory scrambled to obey. But before she retired for the night, she approached her parents' room and tentatively knocked.

"Everyone's decent," Luke called shortly, probably expecting his wife. So he was surprised when Rory ran into his arms.

"I love you, Daddy," she whispered, her breath hot against the stubble on his cheek. It was the first time she had addressed him as such.


	5. Chapter 5: You From the Start

**Chapter 5: You From the Start**

The next several days, Rory and Lorelai and Luke gave each other a wide berth. Rory refused to look Lorelai in the eye, and even though she and Luke seemed to be on the path towards reconciliation, she only spoke to her stepfather when directly addressed. Not even Laurie and her adorable ways could bring the trio together.

After about three days of this, Luke declared the family's tip-toeing around each other "a pile of horseshit," and demanded that an armistice be settled. He and Lorelai had an epic argument about it one morning, upstairs in their room, as Rory was preparing coffee and breakfast for her daughter.

"For heaven's sake, Lorelai, haven't you tortured the poor girl enough? She said she was sorry!"

The only comfort Rory found was in her phone calls to Marty, of which he placed twice daily. The Town Council was keeping him very busy in his work, but he had an offer for her: Virginia Beach was sending him to Woodbridge, one of their Sister Cities apparently, and he asked if he could see her that evening. Rory happily accepted, even going so far as to invite him to Stars Hollow to meet her family. Perhaps meeting Marty would help get them all out of this weird funk; after all, Marty had technically been one of the contributing factors for the funk in the first place.

So it was that Marty flew up to have dinner with the Gilmore-Danes family at Number 37, Maple Street. Rory kissed him in greeting, holding a squirming Laurie in her arms. "This is Mommy's friend. Can you say Hello?"

Laurie gave a shriek of delight and tried to reach for him. Marty seemed absolutely enchanted by the child. "She looks a lot like you," he complimented. Any resemblance Laurie might have to her _father_ was left unobserved.

Luke stepped forward, formal and correct and deeply protective, to shake Marty's hand. Lorelai, for her part, seemed almost back to her old self.

"Naked Guy!" she proclaimed in greeting. "Well, I guess there's nothing you haven't seen before, sweets."

Rory blushed crimson, even as she smiled in a way that she hoped wasn't guiltily. "Oh, no. Definitely not." She quickly clapped a hand over her mouth in horror when she realized what she had just implied. Luke turned a deep shade of purple, the muscles in his face twitching.

"Did you use protection, young lady?"

Rory's jaw went slack. "Daddy!... Luke!" she squeaked, spluttering like a fish and unable to form complete, coherent sentences.

"Shall I set the wine in the kitchen?" Marty asked, a little too loudly, desperate to get this conversation on a different track. _Any_ track.

Things calmed down in the kitchen. Marty spent much of his time playing with Laurie. Watching him with her, Rory's heart swelled. He was as good and attentive with her as Logan had been, the few times he had been with her. And if there was one thing Rory wanted for her daughter, it was an invested father... Logan was fine, managing what he could from halfway around the world. And Luke was wonderful, always. But...

"Will you marry me?" Just as it had been the first time she asked him out, the question came out without Rory really meaning it to or giving it much thought beforehand. She almost whispered it, but as she held Marty's stunned expression, she realized she had never been more sure of anything in her life.

Lorelai had dropped a plate in utter shock, and Luke seemed to be wondering whether to make a hasty exit, perhaps to give the couple some privacy. Marty looked to the parents and then back to Rory, Laurie on his lap. The overhead lamp's light caught his eyes swimming with tears.

"Yes."

* * *

The wedding was held several months later, under the gazebo, on a beautiful fall day. The whole of Stars Hollow had jammed the ceremony, Kirk quickly realizing that trying to sell tickets for the event wasn't going to work. Everyone was going to be there, rain or shine, consequences and fire code be damned.

Luke was deeply moved when Rory asked him in a heartfelt request to walk her down the aisle. She had checked with her father, Christopher, to ask his permission; he had generously acquiesced.

Reaching the end of the aisle, Luke passed Rory off to Marty, trying to balance the solemnity of the moment with his haste to take his seat beside his wife, before he did something stupid. Like cry. But as he turned away, he felt Rory take his hand. Eyes full of love, with a radiant smile, the bride stood on tiptoe and kissed him on the cheek. "Thank you."

Luke broke down. He practically collapsed in Lorelai's arms in the front row, not caring that Kirk was frantically snapping pictures of this historic development.

Rory stared up at Marty as they began their vows.

"You look... resplendent," he beamed down at her.

Rory smiled back. "I'm sorry I made you wait for me."

Marty just shrugged. "It was definitely worth the wait." And he kissed her before Reverend Skinner and Rabbi Barans even declared them husband and wife.


End file.
